Category Archive: Blog

By Tacy Lambiase As Monday’s blog post showed, invasive species can be really bad news for our country’s native plants and animals. From white pine blister rust in the West to the emerald ash borer devastating trees across the Midwest, nonnative species can throw ecosystems completely out of balance. But what can be done to […]

By Michelle Werts For many Americans, spending time in a forest is a time-honored getaway: 42.5 million Americans or 15 percent of the U.S. population older than age six went camping in 2011. 67 percent of those campers camped in public campgrounds, like those of local, state and national parks and forests. Courtesy of the […]

Last week, I participated in a workshop titled “Urban Forestry: Toward an Ecosystem Services Research Agenda” at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. The workshop brought together more than 100 participants, and many more tuned-in via webinar. What a great turn out! With interesting presentations, discussions and networking opportunities, I was excited to […]

It’s National Invasive Species Awareness Week, and here at American Forests, we’re all-too-aware of the havoc that invasive species can wreak on our native ecosystems. Some invasive species really make a name for themselves. Kudzu, a vine native to Japan and China, grew over trees in parts of America so quickly that it’s been called […]

It’s been a busy week for those in the urban forest community. To start the week, the National Academy of Sciences held a workshop on urban forestry. Experts from around the country gathered to discuss the benefits of urban forests and how to best leverage them to move research and policies forward. On Wednesday, the […]

By Josh DeLacey The Green Budget — a document published every year to illustrate the effect of federal conservation funding and programs on our public lands and ecosystems — debuts today, and I’m out getting it in senators’ and representatives’ hands. Well, to be more accurate, I get to help put it into their staffers’ […]

By Tacy Lambiase This week, we’re celebrating some of the most important anniversaries in the history of the National Park Service. Grand Teton National Park, founded on February 26, 1929, and Yellowstone National Park, founded on March 1, 1872, are two of the most iconic and beloved national parks in the United States. Every year, […]

That didn’t take too long. Last month, I wrote about the renewed, and concerning, focus on both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Antiquities Act by the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation and its chairman, Rep. Rob Bishop. Well folks, action has come quickly. On February 5, Rep. […]

Through our multi-year Partnership for Trees collaboration with Alcoa Foundation, hundreds of thousands of trees are being planted on damaged and degraded sites throughout the world, but one project in particular represents the epitome of “degraded”: a garbage dump. In Samara, Russia, American Forests and Alcoa employees are working with the Training Center for Ecology […]

By Michelle Werts Remember when yoga was just a craze? Now, it’s just a normal part of many people’s workout routines. Might another mind, body, spirit experience from Asia be on its way? Over the last few weeks, we’ve been noticing the buzz in the environmental world over the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, translated as […]